Purdue outstanding senior scales trees, academic
heights
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As an udergraduate student, Ben Hasse spent considerale
time climbing trees aroudn the PUrdue campus. Hasse, who wone
the G.A. Ross Award as Purdue's top make undergraduat student,
says he finds peace in the treetops. One of his favorites is
this sycamore near Stanley Coulter Hall.
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By TOM CAMPBELL
For someone who spends so much time up in trees, Ben Hasse seems particularly well grounded.
Hasse graduated from Purdue in May with a 3.98 grade point index and degrees in forestry and Spanish. "I love climbing trees," Hasse admits. "People stop climbing trees when they grow up. They forget how much fun it is. I probably climb trees three or four times a week. It's a great feeling to just climb up and sit there in the branches. It's so peaceful."
Hasse recently received the G.A. Ross Award as Purdue's outstanding senior male student. Winning the Ross Award in April, and the $500 that goes with it, could not have come at a better time for Hasse, the 11th representative of the College of Agriculture so honored in the 20-year history of the award.
"I needed the money to pay my taxes," Hasse explains. "I got the award, but Uncle Sam got the money."
Hasse earned 203 credit hours (his degree in forestry requires 138 hours of credit) with only one "B" (in Spanish) soiling an otherwise perfect academic career.
He will put his two degrees to work this month in El Salvador, where he
has started a two-year stint as a Peace Corps volunteer. Hasse will
keep readers updated on his Peace Corps activities in subsequent issues
of Connections as a special Central American correspondent.
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